Roman inventions. Diocletian tried reinventing government and inventing economics

Roman inventions

Diocletian tried reinventing government and inventing economics

Not all Roman experiments were successful. In AD 284, Diocletian, a man of low birth who had risen through the ranks in the army, became emperor. He solidified the idea of the ‘tetrarchy’: a system of sub-emperors, each one ruling over a number of provinces, all reporting to him. This meant that local issues could be dealt with locally and that power was shared (to a certain extent). Obviously a sub-emperor could go rogue, but after decades of war and strife, the tetrarchy was a welcome idea that brought peace.

By AD 300 however, Diocletian’s empire was facing economic problems: free trade had broken down in some areas and prices were rising. The emperor didn’t help the situation when he embarked on a costly public building programme on a scale not seen for generations.

Diocletian attempted to confront these issues head on. First, he overhauled the tax system, which eliminated ingrained inefficiencies. He also recognised that the coinage had been debased to an extent that confidence in the Roman currency had diminished, so he reminted and revalued all of the coins. While this may sound like a good idea, costs continued to rise even faster, creating a huge spike in prices. Diocletian responded by setting price caps on most resources. The penalty for disobeying these imposed price caps? Death. The system of fixed prices was widely despised, and almost as soon as it was introduced, it was generally ignored. The law of supply and demand dictates that if someone needs something badly enough, they will pay over the odds. Under the circumstances, the black market boomed. Fortunately, the situation in AD 301 didn’t last long – once the new coinage had a chance to embed itself in the Roman economy, prices began to normalise.

Diocletian was also a highly unusual Roman emperor in that, in AD 305, he voluntarily abdicated in favour of a two-emperor system. He retired to the Dalmatian coast (modern day Croatia), where he lived out his days in splendour and spent his time cultivating cabbages.

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